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Friday, June 15, 2012

Last week one of our best friends, Daren, and his little brother, Jeff celebrated their birthdays. We got Daren a two year subscription to Motor Trend magazine and we got Jeff a Chicago Bears candy dispenser (I know.....a Bears fan).

Chicago Bears Candy Dispenser

To celebrate we tagged along on their birthday dinner to Daren's favorite restaurant, Buca Di Beppo, where we had fettucine alfredo, pepperoni pizza, chicken parmigana, etc. The next night, we went out to Benihana, which is ALWAYS a good time. But more about that in another post...

Whenever a birthday comes around, I use it as a perfect opportunity to do some baking. My favorite thing to bake is cupcakes. I don't know why, they make me happy. And knowing that Jeff's favorite candy bar was Twix I decided to attempt to make Twix cupcakes. Then I got ambitious and decided to come up with my own recipe for caramel Twix cupcakes.

Attempting to write my own recipe scared and excited me. I am pretty confident when it comes to cooking my own dishes, usually they come out at least ok. But baking... I am a step by step recipe follower.

I knew how to make a quick caramel sauce because I had done it before, and I knew the basic ingredients of a standard cupcake, so the question was how much caramel would I need to make the flavor shine through.

Tester Cupcake

This took a couple tries, and I still don't have the exact cupcake I was going for. But I am pretty impressed with the cupcake I did create that I am going to post the recipe and work off of it in the future. The cupcake recipe itself is vegan, however, the frosting isn't.

Trial and Error

Vegan Caramel Cupcakes with Chocolate Ganache Frosting

Serves 6

Ingredients for Caramel Sauce:

1/2 cup sugar

1/8 cup water

1/4 cup water (to stop the cooking process)

Directions:

*Make sure your arms and neck are covered before you begin. When you add the water the caramel will splash!

Combine sugar and 1/8 cup of water in a pot with tall sides. Place on stove over high heat.